FINDING MY RELIGION / Former second-in-command of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives talks about why evangelicals should stay out of politics

David Ian Miller, Special to SF Gate

Published 4:00 am, Monday, November 13, 2006

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FINDING MY RELIGION / Former second-in-command of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives talks about why evangelicals should stay out of politics

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As Democrats celebrate their victories in last week's election, some Republicans are wondering what happened to their supposedly rock-solid evangelical voting base. Polls show 30 percent of evangelicals voted for Democrats this election, up from 21 percent last time. Have conservative Christians become disgruntled with the Republican Party?

Yes, says David Kuo, who not long ago was considered a rising evangelical star within the GOP. Kuo lunched with Bill Bennett, played golf with Ralph Reed, fished with John Ashcroft and was trounced by George W. Bush in sports competitions. In 2001, he joined the White House as second-in-command at the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

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The job was Kuo's fantasy come true, but it quickly turned ugly. Kuo says he soon learned the Bush administration and the Republican Party were not really concerned with helping the poor. He resigned his post in 2003.

In "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction" (Free Press, October 2006), Kuo contends that the Bush administration manipulates the Christian right in order to further the Republican political agenda, corrupting believers in the process. Still a staunch evangelical, he calls for Christians to take a two-year hiatus from politics to re-examine their goals and rise above partisanship. Kuo spoke with me by phone last week from his home in Alexandria, Va.

How do you feel about the results of Tuesday's election? Sad? Mad? Glad?

I have mixed feelings. I'm happy that our representative democracy worked, that when voters want a change they can make one, despite all the political maneuvering that took place to discourage change in Congress. The voters saw all the scandals and corruption and they said, "No more. Out."

But I am disappointed that among white evangelicals, more than 70 percent of them still went for Republicans. I'm concerned that evangelical Christians still seem more interested in advancing a political agenda than advancing the good news of Jesus Christ.

Why do you think more evangelicals swung Democratic this time around?

My hope is that those evangelicals said: "Hey, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about far more than abortion or gay rights or those sorts of hot-button issues. If you look at what Jesus talked about, he talked far more about caring for the poor, visiting people in prisons, caring for the sick and feeding the hungry. Maybe the Democrats will do a better job on that."

But I also think it's also as simple as ... evangelicals get pissed about deception, too. The White House has tried so hard to portray President Bush as sort of a "Pastor in Chief" to evangelicals, sort of a George W. Jesus, if you will, that I think some evangelicals thought: "You know what? We see through this charade. Let's vote for somebody else."

You've advised evangelicals to take a two-year fast from politics. Are you still urging people to do that?

Heavens, more than ever! At the end of the day, the spiritual is so much more important than the political. Jesus has been portrayed as a right-wing Republican. People think of Jesus, they think of Jerry Falwell. They think of somebody who is going to try and condemn them for their life. But when you look at the Gospel, that's the exact opposite message to what Jesus preached.

I'm not saying take a fast from life. I urge people to roll up their sleeves and get to work loving their neighbors as themselves. I'm just saying take a little fast from politics because at the end of the day politics isn't the Messiah. When you think about the issues of greatest social concern to America today, politics can't really touch them.

OK, but if half of the evangelicals in the country decided they were going to lobby their political leaders on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden, imagine what that could do.

My hope would be after a two-year fast from politics they might actually do that. But right now, there is no great concern that evangelicals are about to embrace the poor. Right now, the evangelical priorities are probably best found in what the Family Research Council has listed as its top 10 priorities. The poor are not even mentioned there. The No. 2 issue is defunding the ACLU, and defunding Planned Parenthood is, I think, at No. 6 or 7.

The part of your book that's gotten the most attention is where you describe midlevel and senior members of the Bush administration saying that Christians are annoying and tiresome, and describing certain Christian leaders as "ridiculous," "out of control" and "goofy." What has the evangelical response to your book been like?

I've gotten many comments from people who are saying: "We're tired of this political obsession, too. And we're not going to cast our pearls before politicians." But then there has also been the reaction from the Christian political power brokers who have done everything they can to try to mock me and shoot the messenger. Their vested interest is the money that comes in from the millions of grassroots Christians out there and the power that they hold.

I have to say I found it odd that [disgraced evangelical leader] Ted Haggard was officially removed from his post for sexual immorality -- and Haggard's own letter to his congregation focused on the sexual aspect of the whole mess -- but very little was said about the methamphetamine he bought. Why the laser-beam focus on sexual issues?

[Laughs.] This may surprise people, but I agree with what Bill Bennett said to the Christian Coalition around about 1996 or 1997. He told them: "Hey, why don't you focus a little more on divorce, and a little less on homosexuality? Because divorce is a far greater threat to American kids than is homosexuality."

I don't understand the laser focus on [homosexuality], because even if evangelicals had their "worst" scenario, nationwide, and members of the GLBT community everywhere could get married, then what are we talking about? Let's say a million or 2 million marriages. I think that evangelicals are waking up to the fact that there have been marriages in Massachusetts for a couple of years now and the country hasn't exactly fallen apart.

You started out as a Bobby Kennedy Democrat. How do you end up becoming an evangelical Christian in the Bush administration?

I got politics and God confused. I came to Washington to try and fight for what I felt were moral issues, but in the process I let my political passion become a spiritual passion. And any time you confuse that which is spiritual with that which is political, you are in bad shape.

Do you think Democratic control over the House and Senate will effect any real changes, or will it just be more of the same old politics as usual?

I'm an optimist, so I say I'm hopeful. There are some great folks in the Senate who I very much like, people like Mark Pryor, Democrat from Arkansas, Barack Obama and Bobby Casey in Pennsylvania. It will be interesting to see what they do.

You have strongly promoted faith-based community initiatives. What can these organizations do that secular charities can't?

Well, actually, that's a popular misconception. The "Office of Faith-Based Initiatives" was actually the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and it focused on both small faith-based and small secular groups.

The idea is that because these groups are small, they have the ability to treat people as individuals. If we want smaller classrooms because we believe that they will bring about better education, then by that same logic having smaller groups of people who are dealing with problems provides that same sort of benefit. And that was the idea behind the whole initiative. It wasn't purely a religion initiative.

That said, there is a separation of church and state in this country. What business does the federal government have giving tax money to religious charities?

Faith-based groups are an indispensable part of America's social fabric, and, frankly, the American social services couldn't survive without them. Can you imagine taking away the United Jewish Federation and Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services, and Christian groups like Bread for the World, and international groups like World Vision, and all of the day-care groups that are faith-oriented? People of faith are overwhelmingly the ones who tend to go into caring for the poor.

There sometimes seems to be a wide chasm between many religious and secular people in the United States. Do we have any common ground that we can stand on to effect positive change in the country and the world?

Ideally, it should be caring for the poor. It should be visiting those who are in prison and caring for those who are sick. This is what Jesus commanded his followers to do and be. It is what every human being should do.

How do you convince people that that's what they should be focusing on?

From my perspective, I do it because Jesus says that's what's important to do. I realize that some people may be cringing when I say this, because what they think about when they think of Jesus is a very narrow perspective.

They think of Jerry Falwell. They think of Pat Robertson. They think about people who may have called them all sorts of names, people who hate. None of these things are to be reflected in the followers of Jesus. I'd like to liberate this man named Jesus from this political and religious fracas.

So you ask me how I feel about the election? Fine. But how do I feel about trying to liberate the name of Jesus from all of this crap? I feel pretty passionately about that.

Finding My Religion wants to hear from you. Send comments on stories and suggestions for interview subjects to miller@sfgate.com.

During his far-flung career in journalism, Bay Area writer and editor David Ian Miller has worked as a city hall reporter, personal finance writer, cable television executive and managing editor of a technology news site. His writing credits include Salon.com, Wired News and The New York Observer.